As host of the television programs “Jim’ll Fix It” and “Top of the Pops,” Jimmy Savile was one of the British Broadcasting Corporation’s best-known figures in a four-decade career spanning the 1960s to the mid-1990s. But now he is the subject of numerous posthumous investigations into whether he sexually abused perhaps dozens of underage girls, some of them on BBC property.

The scandal has engulfed the corporation, which failed to investigate rumors or take seriously accusations about his behavior at the time. Perhaps even more damningly, it canceled a segment about the allegations that was scheduled to be broadcast last December on “Newsnight,” an influential evening current-affairs program.

About the same time, the corporation broadcast three tributes to Mr. Savile, who died last year at 84.

The BBC has said that the “Newsnight” segment was canceled not out of concern about the corporation’s reputation, but for “editorial reasons,” because the accusations could not be substantiated. But on Friday, its new director general, George Entwistle, announced that an independent panel would investigate whether any BBC executives improperly pressured “Newsnight.”

The director general of the BBC at the time the segment was canceled was Mark Thompson, the incoming president and chief executive officer of The New York Times Company. In a letter sent to members of Parliament on Friday, a BBC spokeswoman said neither Mr. Thompson nor Mr. Entwistle was involved in the “Newsnight” decision.

The unfolding scandal about sexual abuse at the BBC can be viewed as yet another blow to the image of the media. The network’s suppression of a story about a longtime show host’s alleged crimes ought to put a fork in the myth of the Beeb being the gold standard for impartiality and integrity. The fact that the BBC killed a story on its “Newsnight” broadcast while at the same time running tributes to the late Jimmy Saville, the man accused of molesting and raping several teenagers will haunt it for a long time to come.

As the revelations over the BBC sleaze scandal continue, I find myself thinking – as you do – of the Greek myth of the Augean Stables.

The cleansing of these was one of the Labours of Hercules and the phrase has come to symbolise an accumulation of corruption or filth almost beyond redemption.

“Auntie Beeb”. Even the nickname seems sinister now — and massively inappropriate. If the BBC is any relation at all, it’s surely an uncle — a dirty uncle, probably not even a relation but a “friend” of the family, who tells you that it’s just your little secret between the two of you.

* * * * * *

Jimmy Savile’s sickening abuse of already damaged girls was apparently an open secret and a running joke at the BBC, and it wasn’t until a few brave survivors came forward to testify that the corporation — which, remember, is funded by us — seemed inclined to do anything about it. New director-general George Entwistle should be sacked for admitting that he allowed tributes to this repellant creature to be broadcast while being aware of the shelved Newsnight investigation.

The New York Times article quoted above notes, “The allegations have been around for years, but they were publicly aired this month when ITV, a commercial television station, broadcast a documentary in which five women said they had been molested or raped by Mr. Savile when they were teenagers.” It’s online here, and embedded on the next page.

In 2007, I interviewed former BBC journalist Robin Aitken for Tech Central Station, who had recently written a Bernard Goldberg-esque book on the bias that he saw daily while working at the BBC. The piece was titled “A Powerfully Corrosive Internal Culture,” based on one of Aitken’s observations, a phrase which takes on new meaning with this latest scandal.

10 Comments, 8 Threads

1.
Adi

“Dirty Uncle Beeb” as in “Dirty Antisemitic Uncle Beeb”.

The Saville coverup and the Balen Report are probably nothing but a snowflake on the Himalayas at Al-Beebzeera. Their nondisclosure contracts are draconic and for a 3bn BP/year there is hardly any financial accountability. It is also an institution leftist to the core and deeply embedded with the Labour Party.

I know a high school guidance counselor who had sex with almost every woman in his office and his church, while married to two women. He even bragged he had sex with his daughter, on a regular basis. He also bragged that he had sex with many, many female students who came to him for help.
I have been involved with many, many of his associates and superiors. I have always been as plain spoken as I often am on PJM. I have told them all this many, many times. I have pointed out that even if it’s all a pipe dream (and some of these women have told me it isn’t. They don’t doubt his scorecard), shouldn’t someone be investigating this? Huh?
Hominah, hominah, unsubstantiated, hearsay, it wasn’t my wife, was it, my daughter…?
He retired recently with a wonderful pension and a party where they paid homage to his “sensitivity” as a guidance counselor. Did that mean he came to soon?
LALALALALAICANTHEARYOU!
Get faggits and perverts out pf powerful positions, then we’ll talkk. 3% telling; nay ordering 97% to behave as they want. I don’t care what Jesus said. Yahweh said, “Find me 1000 innocent men!”.
Today, you’d be hard pressed.
Did I discover the ONLY scumbag in the educational system?
I ain’t that lucky.

The scum flourish, because most people are cowards. They do not want to get involved, not if it will personally cost them. The people in power did not get there by taking personal risk, which is the exact opposite of business. The trick to being a successful scum is giving people a way to rationalize inaction.

“All that is required for evil to succeed is for enough good men to do nothing.” – Mencken

“Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil
passes not through states, not between classes, nor between political
parties — but right through every human heart — and all human hearts.”
- Alexander Solzhenitzyn

“Savile was, indeed, one of the earliest people to recognize the vast career possibilities of becoming personally very rich, famous and powerful by well-publicized charitable ‘giving’.”

Sandusky had his own charity of course. A lot of people want to let Lance Armstrong off the hook despite his long career of obvious cheating because ‘he’s done so much for cancer.’ A lot of people failed to catch on to Rasputin’s game as well.

People aren’t nearly cynical enough about people who do good, but end up doing pretty well themselves thank you.

Virtually the entire staff of Al Bee Bee Cera , the UK’s Left Wing Islamophile Obambi loving National Broadcaster, is comprised of Islamophile Left Wingers and Homosexuals (male and female) and Trangenders. So is it any wonder that Peadophiles are able to flourish unchallenged there. After all Mohammad who most of those at Al Bee Bee Cera admire almost as much as Muslims do, was himself a paedophile taking Aisha for a wife when she was just SIX years old and consummating that marriage when she was NINE. In between those times he used to rub her on his knees to obtain ‘SATISFACTION’.
What wicked slanderous writings are responsible for this information , and much more and much worse, about Mohammad and his life you ask ? Why from Islams OWN aHadith thats where. All this knowledge about the paedophilic, murderous,slave owning, thieving, anti semitic, misogynous “prophet’ comes from Islams OWN books.
BTW without the aHadith Muslims would not even know how to pray their Koran does not tell them.